Pinna and Pinstripes

Wednesday, 23 March 2011

I love when I wonder about something, and then an answer just comes at me from an unexpected source. Check out this blog entry from one of my friends:

Proper Noun Blog: Savor

There, my friend talks about a book she recently read in which being a “mindful eater” is said to include all six senses. I commented that I couldn’t really think of a way in which to engage hearing in meal time. Put another way, if I was completely deaf, would my meals be diminished in any way?

Then…

This afternoon I was at a Toastmasters meeting (I gave a speech about the Hinckley Firestorm, but that’s not relevant right now). One member gave a speech titled “A Beginner’s Guide to Enjoying Wine.” In his speech, he noted that partaking of wine should involve all the senses, and this is why people clink their glasses at the start or end of a glass of wine: it’s the best way to engage the sense of hearing.

Pretty cool, huh?

Oh – he also recommended the documentary Mondovino, which I have subsequently placed high on my Netflix queueueue.

Thursday, 24 March 2011

Today I took part in a group outing (yes, yes, I know “group” is a silly word, but I honestly think that’s the next level up from my department at work) at Pinstripes.

Pinstripes appears to exist solely for the purpose of catering to events; i.e., you wouldn’t go there just for dinner, but you would go there for, say, a groomsmen dinner (where you can hope to Thor that they don’t serve Pastira).

First, there was an eleven-course meal. I tried to abstain from gluttony and only partook of nine courses. Then there was bowling, then indoor bocce ball, which was a new experience for me. The only other two times I’ve played bocce ball have been outside on sand. The flooring for the indoor variety was akin to a pool table’s felt top: a little power and the balls went a loooong way.

There was so much food leftover that the staff packaged the pasta into containers 9x4x3 inches in size. I took one home and it should provide an additional three meals. They might be that last meals I have on the company tab – as my co-worker said on the way home, perhaps today was our Last Supper.

Friday, 25 March 2011

Back on Wednesday, I went out to my car, and it didn’t start. This wasn’t too much of a problem since I just took my wife’s car to work. Owen is on spring break this week, so he didn’t need to go to school and, though my wife had an appointment that morning, it was postponed due to the weather.

Anyways…

My car chooses not to start whenever the air is really wet. The heavy precipitation of Tuesday, coupled with the melting of snow, likely conspired to keep my engine from “turning over” (whatever that means) on Wednesday morning.

Wednesday and today, I used my wife’s car. (Okay, technically, I really hate the term “wife’s car,” as if she is in sole possession of that Saturn. That’s silly. The car belongs to both of us equally. It just turns out that my wife uses the Saturn more often than I do and, as a routine, I drive the Cavalier to work.) On Thursday, I got a ride to work from a co-worker.

I knew my car must be okay, because my father-in-law stated that I “should be able to get another 50 thousand miles out of that thing,” and that was only 8,000 miles ago. So today, with the sun shining and the air heating up, I decided to give my Cavalier another try. It worked, and I took it around the block to fill the tank up with fossil fuels. When I returned home, I wisely decided to back into the parking space…just in case.